May 29 (Reuters) - The New York Times ( NYT ) is

allowing Amazon.com ( AMZN ) to use its editorial content for

artificial intelligence products such as Alexa, marking the

publisher's first licensing deal tied to generative AI.

The multi-year agreement lets Amazon ( AMZN ) use news articles from

The Times and content from NYT Cooking and sports website The

Athletic, the publisher said on Thursday, without disclosing the

financial terms of the deal.

"This will include real-time display of summaries and short

excerpts of Times content within Amazon ( AMZN ) products and services,

such as Alexa, and training Amazon's ( AMZN ) proprietary foundation

models," NYT said.

The deal comes as AI companies strive to overcome

difficulties in improving their large-language models after

exhausting all the easily accessible data in the world. Many,

including ChatGPT-owner OpenAI, are also facing lawsuits related

to data usage.

In 2023, The Times sued Microsoft ( MSFT ) and OpenAI for

copyright infringement, accusing them of using millions of the

newspaper's articles without permission to help train chatbots

to provide information to readers.

NYT recorded $4.4 million in pretax litigation costs in its

first quarter related to the copyright lawsuit.

Sam Altman-led OpenAI in 2023 said it was looking to partner

up for access to public and private datasets for training

artificial AI models. It has since signed agreements with the

Financial Times, Business Insider-owner Axel Springer, France's

Le Monde, Spain's Prisa Media and Time magazine.

Reuters licensed its articles to Meta Platforms ( META ) in

2024.

NYT's deal with Amazon ( AMZN ) "creates a valuable opportunity to

market the Times to people who do not yet subscribe", Emarketer

analyst Max Willens said.

The publisher recently won four Pulitzer Prizes and added

more digital subscribers than expected for the first quarter,

boosted by its bundled offerings and a busy news cycle driving

more readership.

(Reporting by Jaspreet Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Devika

Syamnath)